Milan Design Week

Artistic covers

A book published by Taschen celebrates the most successful historic vinyl, CD and MiniDisc album covers. And explores how the harmonies with music release art from the traditional circuit of museums and galleries

Creativity on album covers started long ago – the first innovative experiments were by the futurist Luigi Russolo and the surrealist Marcel Duchamp – but they still maintain their communicative power to this day, despite the fact that vinyl records, MiniDiscs and CDs are thought of as vintage and collector’s items (on the other hand even today’s audio files are paired with an image that appears on your smartphone while you listen). In honour of the powerful connections between art and music, Taschen has gathered together the most successful vintage album covers in the sizeable volume Art Record Covers, written by Francesco Spampinato.

The text presents in detailed and well illustrated descriptions more than five hundred covers from the 1950s to today. The compendium selected by the author emphasizes the alternative circulation of the work of art, which thanks to music manages to escape the confines of museums and galleries to achieve mass distribution. The book includes interviews with Shepard Fairey (illustrator) and artist-musicians like Kim Gordon and Raymond Pettibon. Spampinato, a cross-disciplinary professor and scholar, had already published Can you hear me? Music labels by visual artists (published by Onomatopee) in 2015, which featured a careful selection of contemporary artists who worked for independent music labels.

After the major restoration work on the basilica of Santa Maria Novella...

30 November 2018

Founded in 1961 by Piera Peroni Abitare magazine has crossed the history of costume, architecture and design, international, following in its pages the evolution of our ways of life and how we inhabit places